Congress has secured a resounding victory in the Karnataka assembly polls with the party leading in 125 constituencies, the BJP at 76 and the JD(S) at 24.
However, the party has reportedly, booked two hotels, one in Bangalore and another in Mahabalipuram, to shelter its MLAs from poaching attempts.
According to the sources, the Congress has booked the Shangri La hotel in Bangalore and plans to camp there if they breach the 130-seats mark. They added that if the party failed to do so, it plans to shift its leaders to Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu to avoid any attempts of poaching.
This ‘resort politics’ not new to any party or state in India, has been in practice time and again at least since the 1980s.
It is usually practised when it is feared that MLAs might be entering into behind-the-scenes negotiations with rival parties or groups when a party is seeking to prove its majority in the legislative assembly.
This often happens when there are leadership struggles in a party or state, and when the numbers in the House do not strongly favour any party in particular.
The Congress is cautious this time as it does not want a repeat of events that followed the 2018 Assembly polls.
The Congress and JD(S) had joined hands and assembled 116 MLAs (Congress 76, JD-S 37 and three Independents) to form the government. However, it soon collapsed when the Congress-JD(S) lost 17 of their MLAs, who resigned from the Assembly after being holed up in a resort in Mumbai leading up to it and switched sides to the BJP.
Karnataka BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa became the Chief Minister but resigned on July 26, 2021 and was replaced by Basavaraj Bommai.